1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sound outputting apparatus and a sound outputting method, which output sound.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many of recent cellular phones have a speaker and an earphone terminal, and have a music playback capability or the like as well as a telephone capability. Such a cellular phone supplies sound data to an earphone when the earphone is connected to the earphone terminal, and supplies sound data to the speaker when no earphone is connected to the earphone terminal.
Cellular phones give a ring sound (ring notification sound or tone) to inform an incoming call or reception of a mail. Some cellular phones have an alarm function to generate a sound at a preset time to notify a user of the time. Those informing sounds are likewise sent to an earphone when the earphone is connected to the earphone terminal, and sent to the speaker with no earphone connected to the earphone terminal.
In case of notifying a user of something by generating a notification sound, the conventional cellular phones give sound notification according to the use mode of a speaker or an earphone. Therefore, the user can recognize a notification sound without changing the use mode.
As earphone users are increasing recently, various technologies for earphone use have been developed.
For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-203787 discloses a technology of allowing for user talking when receiving an incoming call while playing music and making a call from a head set including a microphone and a headphone.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2004-80395 discloses a technology of notifying an incoming call by vibration of a vibrator while listening to a piece of music played back through an earphone or a headphone.
A sound output from an earphone (including a headphone) is considerably smaller than a sound output from a speaker. Therefore, when a user enjoys music using the earphone and then the user leaves the cellular phone as it is, a ring sound to inform incoming call or an alarm sound of a scheduler and an alarm are do not output from the speaker because the earphone is still connected to the cellular phone. That is, the user cannot be adequately notified of necessary information. The means for solving the these problem are not disclosed in the prior arts.
A similar problem also occurs on devices which have plural types of sound output means, as well as cellular phones.